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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Karl Albrecht on Organizational Intelligence

Karl Albrecht has defined seven characteristic features of an
intelligent organization, and has designed a self-assessment
questionnaire for creating a profile of the intelligence of an
organization.

1. Strategic Vision: do we know where we’re going?
2. Shared Fate: are we all in the same boat?
3. Appetite for Change: can we face the unexpected challenges?
4. Heart: do we have the spirit and energy to succeed?
5. Alignment and Congruence: do the organization’s “rules and tools”
help us succeed?
6. Knowledge Deployment: do we share our information, knowledge, and
wisdom?
7. Performance Pressure: are we serious about getting things done?

Some of his questions are useful, but I don't think they provide a
rounded view of the intelligence of an organization.

1. By strategic vision, Albrecht is referring to the capacity to
create, evolve, and express the purpose of the enterprise. This is
certainly an important aspect of sense-making, but overlooks an
equally important aspect of sense-making, which is to understand the
evolving demands of the environment and to align vision and purpose
to these demands. In Albrecht's model of organizational
intelligence, there is no explicit connection between vision and
reality, and no mention of the extent to which organizations (and
their leaders) understand and anticipate the present and future.

2. A stupid organization can still have a sense of community, and a
strong collective affiliation to an outdated or unrealistic vision,
leading to a collective refusal to face facts.

3. An appetite for change is important, but profound change also
requires a degree of patience and a willingness to tolerate
uncertainty and inconsistency. Albrecht talks about discomfort, but
many organizations try to avoid discomfort by rushing through
changes as quickly as possible, often resulting in a series of
failed initiatives.

4. Heart. This may well be a consequence of organizational
intelligence - an organization that values and engages the
intelligence and creativity of its employees should end up with more
satisfied and engaged and committed employees. But this is also strongly connected to trust.

5. Alignment and congruence. This is to do with the architecture of
collaboration, which is perhaps the most difficult aspect of
organizational intelligence. The most intelligent organizations
typically don't display complete congruence, but manage with a degree of
creative tension and conflict between different functions or positions.

6. Knowledge deployment. Albrecht concentrates on generating and sharing
knowledge (flow of knowledge, conservation of sensitive information,
the availability of information at key points of need) but I see the key
capability for organizational intelligence in terms of linking
knowledge to action. How has this knowledge helped us do things better,
or to do better things?

7. Performance pressure - a preoccupation with the performance of the enterprise, in terms of the achievement of identified strategic objectives and tactical outcomes. This preoccupation is found
in many bureaucratic organizations, especially those dominated by the
so-called target culture which often militates against organizational
intelligence. I therefore cannot see any necessary correlation between
performance pressure and organizational intelligence.

A company like Enron would probably have scored fairly high on
Albrecht's questionnaire, but it also provided a spectacular illustration of
Albrecht's Law, namely that "intelligent people, when assembled into
an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity".

Albrecht identifies two kinds of stupidity, which he calls the
learned kind and the designed-in kind.

The learned kind prevails when people are not authorized to
think, or don't believe they are.

The designed-in kind prevails when the rules and systems make
it difficult or impossible for people to think creatively,
constructively, or independently.

I believe there is a third kind of stupidity, which I call the
disconnected kind. This is where there are many talented people, but
they don't talk to each other; where the feedback and learning loops are
broken; and where management fails to connect the dots. This is the
Enron model of organizational stupidity, and in my view it is the most
powerful explanation for the kind of organizational stupidity that
Albrecht identifies in his eponymous
law. But Albrecht's questionnaire is not designed to detect this
kind of stupidity.

Karl Albrecht, The Power of Minds at Work: Organizational
Intelligence in Action (2002)

1 comment:

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